Site publishes intelligence emails

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said more information about Stratfor's actions will emerge in the next couple of days

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has started to publish more than five million confidential emails from a global intelligence company.

The emails, dated from July 2004 and late December 2011, are said to reveal the "inner workings" of US-based company Stratfor.

The group said the emails show Stratfor's "web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods".

WikiLeaks claims the company "fronts as an intelligence publisher", but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency.

At a press conference in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would not reveal where the emails had come from.

"We are a source protection organisation," he said.

"As a source protection organisation and simply as a media organisation we don't discuss or speculate on sourcing."

The documents are believed to have come from loose-knit hacker group Anonymous, which claimed to have stolen information from the firm in December.

WikiLeaks said the material contains privileged information about the US government's attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor's own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. The group said there are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.

But Mr Assange said more information would emerge in the near future: "We have looked most closely at the actions against us, the bigger story is likely to come out of this probably in three or four days' time."